Tri of Compassion - Race Report

First of all, I want to say that I love this race. As long as I am in town, I will always do this one. My family lives on one of the streets that the run goes down, so I feel like it's a hometown race. Everyone including my grandma stands out on the lawn shouting encouragement!

I stated to my coach that depending on the field, one of my goals for this year was to win this race. When I got to race package pickup and saw names like Travis Chater and Allan Boos, I knew that my hopes of first were probably too high. That being said, I was really excited to race against these guys. I thought I might be able to give them a run early, or at least take away some positives. As of a year ago, these guys were completely on another planet regarding triathlon fitness. Now, I feel like I am closer than ever to being on the same step as them.

The triathlon itself cannot be any more athlete friendly. The swim is in a pool, the bike is 3 laps of a pretty flat course, and the run is along the beautiful shoreline of Esquimalt. Another nice thing that was changed this year was the start times. Last year the top triathletes started at 12:30, which is way too late if it is hot. This year, the first heat went off at 6:00 am (I feel bad for those guys!), so that we could go off at 9:30 am.

I found myself in a lane with Christopher Sundby, who is a great young triathlete. I knew he would have a good swim so my goal was to stick right on his toes for the swim. For possibly the first time in a pool swim tri, we were given a nice amount of time to warmup. I probably got in around 500m of solid warmup before we lined up to start.

The swim felt good. I had tons of energy. I caught up to Christopher after 1 lap (we went off in 5 second intervals), and stick with him for the entire swim. The other two people in our lane were either not feeling good that day, or thought they were better swimmers! We passed both after about 7 laps. It was funny because for both swimmers Chris was able to pass them on the wall, while I had to pass both mid lane. It wasn't a big deal though, since the lanes were nice and wide, and 3 people could fit easily. Because of this, I didn't try to overdo it when passing. I just slowly climbed up to the swimmer until be both hit the end wall more or less even. The second swimmer however, didn't see me (I don't know how), and as we both came up to the wall she suddenly turned right into me. I didn't really mind at all, since I am used to contact from open water practice and races, but I'm sure she wasn't too thrilled to get a foot in the face! I felt kinda bad. I finished the swim in 7:01. That is 25 seconds faster than last year. For a 500m swim, that's pretty sweet! Last year's swim was considered the swim of my life. I jumped out right behind Christopher. To show how different my wetsuit swimming is to my pool swimming, I came out of the water over half a minute behind Chris 2 weeks ago at the New Balance Sprint.

T1 was as smooth as it gets. Superman onto my bike, with my elastics perfectly placing my shoes, and I was off.

The bike was good. Last year on the bike, I duelled it out with a guy the entire way, and it really helped my time. This year I was all on my own. I came out of the water right behind Allan Boos (another positive for the day), and I knew Travis Chater was out way before me, so I figured I was in third. Riding solo is definitely harder. You think more about the pain. My first lap went by in 11.12.28, which is slower than I wanted but it included all of the transition time and putting my shoes on, so I wasn't worried. Second lap was done in 9:31. I passed Don from Fort Street Cycle on this lap, who was the bike part of the FSC relay team that had Kirsten Sweetland as the swimmer. After passing him I was almost certain that I was third. The final lap was done in 10.42.95 (again with some transition stuff in there), and I was done the bike in 31.28.00 (31.55.00 including transitions).

T2 was completely the opposite of T1. It was my first real "ordeal" of the year. I come off the bike feeling good, and go to slip on my new racing flats. These flats are a little tricky to get into. There is an elastic band near the toe of the shoe that sometimes catches my pinkie toe in it. At the New Balance race, I just ignored it. At this race though, it got caught in an awkward angle and after about 20 steps I knew I wasn't going to be able to continue with it. I stopped and pulled my foot out of the shoe. Unfortunately, the in-sole came out with it. Well I have played with these in-soles before and I know they are not easy to get back in, so I just decided to forget about it and run without it. I was running with an in-sole in my hand! One of the volunteers kindly took it for me.

After about 100 meters I started to feel the pain. It was like a knife stabbing the arch of my foot. Although there is not a lot in a racing flat, those flimsy in-soles make a world of difference! There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to fight through the pain. My family was waiting along the route, and I would continute with a broken leg if it meant running by them! I started to run on the outside of my shoe. It sounds dumb, but in the moment you just do whatever the hell you can! The pain started to subside somewhat, though I think it was more me getting used to it. That's when another problem started, my nutrition.

I wanted to change it up a little bit this race. I hate eating gels. I can barely get them down before a race. I always feel better in training with a little bit of solid food in my stomach. So today, I tried eating a powerbar 20 minutes before the race. This combined with half a water bottle of gatoraid was a bad combo. Too many carbs for such an intense race. I think the powerbar thing could work, but only in an Olympic distance race or longer. This race was just too intense for it.

So here I am 200 m in on the run, with a sharp pain in my foot and I am trying not to puke. I family's house is coming up, and I am already planning where to puke when I turn the corner after seeing them. It felt bad. I could feed the jostling in my stomach. Thank god the first 500m of the course are basically a slight downhill. Without that, I don't know what would have happened. After about 900m, I started to feel slightly better. By slightly better, I mean I wasn't going to immediately puke, but the feeling was still there. It is the feeling when I am sprinting with Dan on the last of 10- km repeats at Elk Lake.

But there were also positives that I was taking note of during the run. First, my legs felt great. I went to get a bike fit earlier in the year, because I was having a hard time on the run with sore legs around my ankles. We switched things up, and now I feel much better off the bike! If my stomach was feeling better, I could have pushed it a lot harder. Also, my form felt really good. Since I couldn't go as hard as I wanted to, I concentrated on good form and high knees. This really helped me keep my speed during the tougher sections of the course. At the turn-around there was someone about a minute behind me looking strong, so I picked it up as hard as I could and headed for home. I crossed the line in 57:26 with an 18:30 run time. Good for 3rd place overall. Let the analysis begin.

I read an article by Mark Allan a while back talking about his trials in Kona. He couldn't understand why he was consistently having a sub par run, when running was his strength. He said he finally realized that he wasn't running well because his swimming and biking were not strong enough, which didn't leave him as much energy on the run compared to others. This is exactly how I feel I have improved. Looking at last year's time, I was over a minute and a half faster, which is pretty good on such a short course, where time is hard to find. My swim was obviously better than last year,but my bike was only 15 seconds faster than last year.

Let me tell you, I am ten times better at cycling than I was last year. But I remember that last year, I had the ride of my life. And last year, when I got on the run, I had a terrible go at it. This year, due to the increased fitness on the bike and swim, I had a run that was almost a minute faster than last year. This decrease in run time is not due to me being that much better at running. In fact, I have been doing fairly low mileage for a while now compared to cycling and swimming. It is due to me being a better all around triathlete compared to last year. So this I am happy about! This is including my debacle with my shoes and nutrition! I am also fairly certain that I could have run a second 5 km faster if we were doing an Olympic distance event. I take a while to get settled on the run, so the Sprint distance does not suite me as well. All in all I think it was a great day shared by family and friends. It was also my first time ever winning prize money! $50 bucks goes a long way these days, so I am extremely pleased!

I cannot wait to do a solid block of training before the Self Transcendence Tri in August. I started today with a 20 x 100 main set in the pool, where I was consistently under 1:25, and dropped to 1:21 on the last few. I wanted the pain. It felt so good!

Happy training!